(From Gilbert Street and a Half + Ten Years Later, photographs and an essay. Published by Scrivana Press, Iowa City, Iowa, available from www.Lulu.com.)
The North End- 2010
Today, it is October. I park on Gilbert Street near Mercy Hospital, where a landscaped mini-park offers a pleasant place to relax. Gilbert Street rises gently in front of me. I head north toward Brown Street. This section of street is firmly residential, a part of the Northside Historic District. I have to make a conscious effort to notice changes. Instead, what strikes me are the memories that return.
At number 418, brownish red bricks show through flaking paint. Is this deliberate, or a home in the process or being cleaned up? No way to tell. I look for a wreath of bare twigs I remember was in a doorway, and find it. The outdoor wooden stairs to an upper apartment, where once I had a chat with a young woman sitting on the top step, still exist. Narrow porches shelter the clutter of crumpled half-empty charcoal bags, old shoes, bikes, empty bottles and cans, and canvas chairs. On one of these a young man sits today in the late afternoon sun, engrossed in his reading. People pass me on the sidewalk with small children or dogs.
I have reached the northern end of Gilbert Street. These last blocks slope enough that, on two winters, I was able to ski down the middle of the street on a Sunday, when street cleaners had been slow to come around with a plow.
Downtown on the move
Although much in unchanged in this part of town, some of the photos taken earlier could not be taken today. The tornado of 2006 did eliminate a favorite board fence, crush roofs and walls, leaving some land still vacant, while other buildings were soon repaired. The bus station that stood on the corner of College Street has been relocated closer to the center of downtown. A restaurant changed name several times, and is now gone. A 14-story building has sprung up and dominates the skyline above the pedestrian mall. South from the center, some businesses have other owners, new apartments have been built. An art gallery and an antiques shop are gone, an Asian grocery changed hands. This is the shifting fabric of the city.
On the whole, the atmosphere I imbibed in years past survives. Rallston Creek still flows deep in its channel, mostly unnoticed by anyone, except pedestrians like me who lean over the bridge abutment and enjoy gazing at the normally meager flow of water held back by riprap rocks. Under the concrete bridge, a home of sorts shelters sundry belongings and a camp cot and chair. It is vacant just now as, seeking the reflections of weeds and scrub growth, my eyes intrude into its darkness and damp cold.
Promise of the street
I leave the long street behind to return home across the river, but the street remains with me. I am of it and it is part of me. After living in its vicinity over forty years, I feel and own its presence. This is why I return. The street lives on as I have. Both of us changed and the same.
This is a city of some 70,000. An insect among the planet's giants that boast inhabitants in the millions. Yet, to the lone wanderer on foot- lone, but never lonesome- urban space is measured on a human scale. I am not the first to say so. Jane Jacobs celebrated the flâneur on city sidewalks. What I encompass in the moment is what I perceive. Passerby, vehicles. My pauses are frequent, dictated by whimsy rather than the demands of traffic. What can be seen and heard and surmised in the immediate surroundings, what I am personally aware of, is the extent of it. The texture of nearby walls, cloud formations above rooftops, café tables set up on the sidewalk. Twisted bikes abandoned where they fell, ragged posters stapled to wooden posts. But also budding leaves on springtime limbs, and always people. People. What are they thinking, where are they going? Do I care? Does it matter?
A walk on the city street is a promise to be fulfilled. On the sidewalks of the Northside of Iowa City, I think of myself as part of the atmosphere, likely totally ignored. Mobiles held to an ear, people are absorbed in their own thoughts and concerns. I may be invisible to them, but mine is the urban privacy Jane Jacobs wrote about. There is a kinship of sorts among us, even if unacknowledged.
In front of John's Grocery, I wait to see who walks out. If someone's flowing hair catches the afternoon sunlight, I will quickly attempt to take a picture, but a photographer misses a lot of shots! No matter. I will be back to renew in my memory the many views of Gilbert Street.
I know the street as a solid river. Bricks at the north end of town convert to concrete and black top for the remainder of the distance. To me, the unevenness and the coloration of the bricks add warmth to the cityscape. Rainy days accentuate the paving patterns.
Even after the brief interval of a decade, I am aware of the resilience of urban settings. Cities are built, grow, decay, disappear, to be reborn in new forms at new times, in repeated cycles. The city, as an outcropping on this small crumb of a small planet. The street, as a river of stone and wood and humanity, flowing through time.
I know I will return on foot many times to a street where, in Jacobs' words, the walker experiences the city as a theater in which to be both actor and audience. There is a thereness there. It is in the city's bones.
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